The art of pulling or removing nails from wood.
Restoration and reconstruction work in buildings often requires removal of trim wood around doors, windows, cabinets and baseboards. In many cases, the trim wood is later replaced, and since such trim wood is usually held in place with nails, much time can be spent removing the nailed trim without splitting it and otherwise pulling or removing the nails from the trim so that the trim can be reused.
Such nail removal is made more difficult by the fact that trim wood is usually held in place with finishing nails that have small heads only slightly larger in diameter than the nail shank. Also, finishing nails are often counter-sunk into the wood, so that a tool used to remove the nail must be dug into the wood to get a grip on the nail. This, and any prying force used, can damage the wood around the nail.
Trim wood can be pried loose from its mounted position by carefully exerting prying pressure to pull the nails loose from the wood under the trim in which they are embedded, but this can be difficult to accomplish without splitting or otherwise damaging the trim wood. Nails can then be driven back out of the trim wood from the backside of the trim for easy removal, but this also can split the trim wood around the edge of a countersunk nail head.
Often, the best place to locate nails for refastening removed trim wood in place is the same place that its original fastening nails were located. Thus, replacement nails often re-secure trim wood in place by being driven back into the original holes.
Altogether, dealing with nail problems in removing and replacing wood trim in buildings can consume much of a worker""s time. The invention of this application aims to reduce the labor involved and make nail extraction fast and convenient, with minimal damage to the trim wood being removed. Once the invention presents an effective way of extracting finishing nails, it becomes clear that the invention can be used anywhere that finishing nails have been deployed. This can include nail removal from furniture and other constructions that do not involve trim wood in buildings. Although the problem of finishing nails in trim wood motivated the inventive nail extractor, its operation makes it clear that it can also be used for extracting the bodies of screws whose heads have broken off.
The nail extractor and extraction method of this application involves a smooth walled tube having an inside diameter slightly larger than the diameter of the heads of nails to be removed. The tube is spun and pressed into the wood around the nail head so that the tube drills into the wood and compresses a core of drilled wood against the embedded nail. When the tube has been spun and pressed into the wood to a sufficient depth, the compressed wood inside the tube grips and spins the nail loose so that the nail is quickly and easily extracted or withdrawn from the wood.
The inventive extractor preferably includes an ejector that can be advanced into the tube to eject the extracted nail from the tube. The necessary elements to accomplish the withdrawal of the nail and its ejection from the drilling tube are preferably combined in a sleeve that holds the drilling tube at its forward end and has an internal thread engaging an external thread of an ejector rod that is chucked into an electric drill. These elements are preferably arranged so that when the drill operates in a forward direction, the ejector rod retracts and the tube spins clock-wise into the wood to extract the nail. Then when the outer sleeve of the extractor is held against rotation and the drill rotates in a reverse direction, the ejector rod advances an ejector pin into the drilling tube to eject the nail and the drilled wood core from the drilling tube.
The extraction and ejection of a nail is accomplished without any contact between the extractor and the nail itself. This avoids all jaws or grippers that must physically engage the nail to accomplish its extraction, and instead, the drilled core of wood compressed within the drilling tube accomplishes the necessary nail gripping and also spins the nail loose from its anchorage so that it is easily withdrawn from the wood.